Android 2.4, "Ice Cream," said to be coming in summer

Mark Raby, 12th January 2011

Nothing beats the summer heat like a big bowl of soft-serve goodness, and Android's taking a cue as I scream, you scream, we all scream for a new version of the mobile operating system.

Even though Android 3.0, otherwise known as Honeycomb, is expected to become available in the coming months, Google is apparently also working on Android 2.4, codenamed Ice Cream, at the same time, according to a report from mobile enthusiast site Pocket Lint. Confused yet?

So here's the rundown. Android 3.0 is essentially a reboot of Google's mobile platform. It'll carry stricter hardware specifications and make development a bit more streamlined. But since it's going back to the basics, current Android phones aren't expected to get the 3.0 upgrade.

That's where Android 2.4 comes in. This will be an update to the phone software for those phones that already exist, while new advanced devices will look to 3.0 and beyond. Alright, so it's still a bit confusing, but in someone's mind it makes sense.

Even for those customers with an existing Android phone, many haven't even been upgraded to the most current version available now, Android 2.3, AKA Gingerbread. In fact, almost no one has that version of the OS. Instead, Google's still trying to get everyone up to version 2.2. It's a real mess out there. Android 3.0's sounding pretty good right about now, isn't it?

As of now, the news of Android 2.4 is just a rumor, but given how quickly Google has been doling out software updates over the past several months, we wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out to be true.